According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan, a whopping 69% of Chicago's emissions come from buildings, making it our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity as a city to tackle change. At Electrify Chicago we want to showcase some of the best and worst performing buildings in the city using publicly available data and manual annotations to add building photographs and label multi-building owners like universities.
You can start by looking at Chicago's buildings with the highest greenhouse gas intensity - this means that they use the most energy when adjusted per unit of square foot, so big buildings could actually perform much better than very inefficient small buildings on this metric.
Note: This data only includes buildings whose emissions are reported under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. According to the City “As of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.” This dataset is also then filtered to only buildings with reported emissions > 1,000 metric tons CO2 equivalent.
This data is also from 2020, but when new benchmark data is available, we'll update the site.
Property Name / address | Primary Property Type |
Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO2/sqft) |
Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO2 eq.) |
---|---|---|---|
WTTW 11 - Main Campus
5400 N St Louis Ave
| Office | 15.4
Highest 13%
| 2,813
Highest 33%
|
820 N Orleans St
820 N Orleans St
| Office | 15.4
Highest 13%
| 2,388
Highest 41%
|
2340 N California Ave
2340 N California Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 15.3
Highest 13%
| 1,468
Lowest 28%
|
22 W Washington St
22 W Washington St
| Office | 15.2
Highest 13%
| 7,149
Highest 10%
|
Mahalia Jackson Apt
9141 - 9177 S South Chicago Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 15.2
Highest 13%
| 1,390
Lowest 24%
|
Home Depot, #1950 Chicago South Loop
1300 S Clinton St
| Retail Store | 15.1
Highest 13%
| 1,598
Lowest 34%
|
Moody Bible Institute, Torrey-Gray Doane
840 N LaSalle St
| College/University | 15.1
Highest 13%
| 1,306
Lowest 20%
|
Walmart Supercenter #5965
10900 S Doty Ave
| Wholesale Club/Supercenter | 15.1
Highest 13%
| 2,359
Highest 42%
|
California Park / McFetridge
3843 N California Ave
| Other - Recreation | 15.1
Highest 13%
| 1,630
Lowest 35%
|
Aperion Care International
4815 S Western Blvd
| Senior Care Community | 15.0
Highest 14%
| 1,372
Lowest 23%
|
Symphony of Chicago West
5130 W JACKSON BLVD
| Senior Living Community | 15.0
Highest 14%
| 1,659
Lowest 36%
|
Kennedy-King College
6301 S Halsted Ave
| College/University | 15.0
Highest 14%
| 7,464
Highest 9%
|
S1-Sinai
🚩
1525 S CALIFORNIA AVE
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 15.0
Highest 14%
| 15,145 #41 Highest
|
MB Ice Arena
1801 W Jackson Blvd
| Ice/Curling Rink | 14.9
Highest 14%
| 1,900
Lowest 45%
|
Ford City Mall - AMC Theater
7601 S Cicero Ave
| Movie Theater | 14.7
Highest 14%
| 1,068
Lowest 5%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data